The Daughter of Night (20 page)

'While you've been away, I've been thinking, and I've come to the conclusion that this strange bargain we made isn't going to work. You don't really need a wife; a housekeeper, a nice one, would do just as well, so I've decided to leave you and go back to London. Please don't bother to see me out, I'm going to phone for a taxi, and there are loads of trains…'

'…Then I shall require an immediate repayment of twenty thousand pounds.' Demetrios' voice came from the bedroom door which she couldn't see in the mirror. 'Do you have the cash handy?'

'You know I haven't!' She swung round to face him and all her fine, calm, practical words died on her lips, to be replaced by hot, angry ones—the ones which she'd decided not to use. 'And I wouldn't give it to you if I had. A bargain's a bargain, but you've cheated on me, so that washes it all out. I'm free to go.'

'Not until you've paid your debt and explained why, when you should be greeting me with affection, making up to me for being without you for two weeks—you're behaving,' he stopped and looked at her—'and looking like a harpy. Did you know your hair's come down?'

With a quick gasp of dismay, Hester turned back to the mirror, and nearly wept at what she saw. During her rehearsal, she had been concentrating on her expression, trying out a haughty curl to her lip and a sophisticated droop of her eyelids—now she looked at the total picture and groaned. She was unbecomingly flushed and several tumbled strands of hair were falling across her shoulders. Hastily and with trembling fingers, she pushed them back into the loose coil at the back of her neck, and while she was doing it, Demetrios crossed to the bed to lift the lid of one of the cases and examine the contents.

'So,' he murmured with an aggravating smile about his mouth, 'you were practising your farewell speech, but haven't you made a small mistake? No nice housekeeper would perform
all
your duties—she'd walk out if I expected her to go to bed with me and she mightn't be the right age for childbearing. What's going on?' He made the enquiry mildly. 'Or have I come back to a madhouse?'

'You could call it that.' Hester looked at her husband and then looked hastily away again. It wouldn't do to indulge in sentimental thoughts about how two weeks in the Mediterranean sunshine had darkened his skin to a warm, deep olive tint—how the open neck of his white shirt flattered the strong column of his throat—how good he looked, like a glass of water to a thirsty traveller or food to a starving woman—She pulled herself together.

'Yes,' she went on, fighting against a shortage of breath which threatened to make her voice wobble, 'you could very well call it a madhouse. The whole set-up's screwy and the deeper in I get, the screwier it becomes. That's why I'm getting out, while I still have my sanity. Oh!' she squealed with temper as, with a wide swing of his arm, Demetrios swept the cases from the bed. They tumbled to the floor and one sprang open, scattering clothing onto the carpet. 'Now look what you've done!' she scolded. 'I'll have to pack that lot all over again!'

'You'll do nothing of the kind.' Demetrios advanced on her until his broad shoulders filled her vision completely. Her heart gave one tremendous thump and started to beat erratically and her mouth went dry from fright. 'Nobody's going anywhere any more today, and certainly not you.' He made it very definite.

'You can't stop me!' Hester flared, pushing past him bravely and starting to gather up the tumbled garments, ramming them back in the case higgledy-piggledy and forcing the lid down on the jumbled contents. 'You forgot Katy's birthday, you didn't even send her a card'—she made it sound like one of the seven deadly sins, 'and like I said, you've been cheating on me. That wipes the slate clean… Oooh! Don't stand there looking like a pillar of virtue,' she raged. 'I know all about it, I know what you've been up to, and if you think you can hop out of my bed and into Athene's whenever you fancy, you've got another think coming! She might have the stomach for that sort of thing, but I won't tolerate it. You—you lecher! I will
not
be made a convenience of!'

'What makes you think I've been going to bed with Athene?'

Hester scrambled to her feet and aimed a kick at his shins. It was rather spoiled by the fact that she was wearing soft shoes so it didn't have quite the effect she desired, but the doing of it relieved her feelings.

'I don't just think, I
know
!' she squealed with wrath. 'You and she went to Athens together and you didn't stay at the hotel as you said you were going to—you didn't tell me that, but I know. You shacked up with her at her villa or whatever you call it…' The rest of what she'd been going to say died on her lips as Demetrios advanced on her and she cringed when his hands came hard on her shoulders.

'Frightened, Hester?' Demetrios spoke between his teeth. 'You've every right to be. I was
not
sleeping with Athene. I've never slept with her.'

'Liar!' she spat at him, raising her voice unconsciously.

'Be quiet!' he commanded, giving her a shake. 'Do you want the woman to hear us quarrelling?'

'Who cares!' She tried to squirm away from his hands, but it was no use, he was holding her shoulders as though he never meant to let go. 'She can't anyway, she's not here today, she's taking one of the children to the dentist. And don't try to change the subject— I'm talking about Katy, she's a living proof that you're lying. I know you said she's your adopted daughter, but she's more than that, isn't she? She's yours and she's Athene's as well. That's something nobody could hide—why, even Vilma spotted the likeness, and she was only looking at the photograph in the sitting-room…' With a little cry of dismay, Hester covered her mouth with shaking fingers. Damn her unruly tongue! That was the worst of losing her temper, all sorts of things came spilling out, and among them the one thing she hadn't wanted him to know. And then she realised he'd missed it, it had gone right over his head.

'You bloody little idiot!' His fingers bit deeper into her shoulders, bruising the delicate bones, but she welcomed the pain—it kept her fighting mad.

'Don't you dare swear at me!'

'Swear at you? I'll damn well strangle you, and who could blame me? It's a wonder I haven't beaten you!
Will you listen
, instead of tearing into me like a wildcat! I
told
you, Athene and I are distant cousins— to be exact, our grandmothers were sisters—identical twin sisters. Yes,' as she started to wriggle again to be free of him, 'I know Katy looks like Athene, but that likeness doesn't prove she's Athene's daughter, it merely proves she's mine! Will you get that through your stupid little head?
Mine
, not Athene's!' and then, emphasising every word with a shake, '
Do-you-believe-me-now
?'

Hester collapsed like a pricked balloon, all her fight gone and with only bewilderment and an aching regret left.

'Yes,' she stood quite still under his hands. 'Yes, I'll believe you—you've never lied to me—Oh hell!—You won't understand this, but I'm going!'

'Over my dead body!' Demetrios let go of her shoulders and swept her up in his arms, striding with her to the bed. 'You've just said we're alone in the house, which makes this a very good opportunity to have things straightened out. We're going to have a talk, we'll love each other a little, and then we'll have some lunch.' He put her down gently on the bed and dropped his long length beside her, drawing her close, and with a hand on the back of her head, he pushed her face into the curve of his neck.

'No, don't wriggle, Hester. I've got something to tell you, and it'll be easier if I can't see your face.'

'Why?' she muttered, feeling the skin of his throat beneath her lips. 'It'll make an awful mess of your shirt.'

'Because it's a sad little story and I'm not proud of the part I played in it.' He rested his chin on the top of her head. 'And my shirt doesn't matter. So be quiet and don't interrupt, I just want you to listen.'

'All ears,' she assured him, feeling suddenly gay as though she'd come home to warmth, tenderness and love. 'Waggling ears,' she added, choking back a sob which was half laughter.

'And it's no time for jokes,' Demetrios chided her seriously. 'I said it's rather a sad little story, nearly fourteen years old. At that time, my father had sent me to Cyprus where we were opening our first hotel; I had to learn the business from the ground up. I went out in April, a young man, not yet twenty-one and, like all young men, very full of myself; brash, greedy and a bit careless. One of the receptionists was a girl, about eighteen, and we became friendly. She was an orphan, her father had been a Greek Cypriot and her mother an Armenian from Thrace—that served as a common bond, as my mother was also from Thrace.'

'But I thought your mother was Turkish.' Hester hadn't wanted to interrupt, but she wanted to get things straight.

'She was,' he chuckled as she raised her head from his shoulder. 'You don't know very much about Greece or the Greeks, do you? Both Albania and Turkey have Greek minorities and there are Turks, Slavs and Armenians living in Greece, mostly in Thrace. There are also Vlachs, who speak a Latin-based language, and some people known as Pomaks who are Bulgarian Moslems—but, to get back to this girl, she had only one relative left, an old woman who lived up in the mountains near Mount Olympus; she was lonely, starved of affection and with nobody to spend her own affection on. She chose me, we became more than friendly and, as I said, I was greedy and careless. I took what she offered without a second thought.' Demetrios paused and when he started speaking again, his voice was deep with regret.

'In the September, I was sent for to come back to England—my parents had been in a traffic accident, my father was killed outright and my mother, although terribly injured, was still alive. Naturally I came back at once, after promising the girl I'd return as soon as possible, but I couldn't. My mother needed me and I stayed with her until she died, which was about six months later. I wrote to the girl, she wrote back to me, a pleasant letter saying she was well and waiting for my return, but I never answered that letter. I made excuses to myself—I was busy; with my father dead, there was a lot to do, a lot to learn—I couldn't leave my mother—any excuse but the real one, which was that I didn't love the girl, that she was like a holiday romance, she had no part in my real world.'

Hester raised her head and looked into his eyes. She thought she knew the rest of the story, and the pain reflected in his face told her she was at least partly right. 'But you did go back eventually?

'Mmm,' he pushed her head down again. 'But too late. The girl had left the hotel some time before I returned, there was a rumour among the staff that she was pregnant and, knowing her—she wasn't a promiscuous girl or anything like that—I knew the child was mine, so I set out to find her. There was only one place she could have gone, back to the old woman, so I went there. The village was bad enough, Hester—you've no idea of the poverty, but where the old woman lived, farther up the mountain, it was indescribable. She had a bit of land. Pasturage for a few goats which were her livelihood and a tiny house, one room downstairs and a bit of a loft. There were no facilities, every drop of water had to be carried from a spring, and that was where the girl had gone and where my daughter was born.' His voice dropped to almost a whisper, thick, hoarse and full of pain. 'She wasn't a strong girl and she'd had a hard time, out in all weathers with the goats—there was very little money and no doctor—nobody to fetch him if one had been available—only the old woman to do everything, and she was very angry when I arrived. I don't think she would have minded so much if the baby had died as long as the girl lived—as she said, the girl was of some use even if it was only to milk the goats—but the baby was an added burden and she was too old for it.'

'But the girl was dead,' Hester muttered into his chest. 'What did you do then?'

'Gave the old crone enough money to keep her in splendour for the rest of her life, and even then she wasn't satisfied until I hired a boy from the village to care for her damn goats—and I brought the baby back to Limassol with me. She was only a few weeks old, but her resemblance to my grandmother was marked, even then, and I called her Khadija, after my own mother. It wasn't until I imported Miss Mungo three years ago that we called her Katy. Miss Mungo couldn't get her tongue round "Khadija", so she called her after the initials on the cases. Khadija Thalassis—K. T.—Katy—it stuck, and Katy seemed to like it. She wanted a home in England with me and an English name to go with it.'

He lifted Hester's head with a finger under her chin. 'Do you think very badly of me? I've tried to mend my ways. Since then, there have been other women, but I made sure they weren't innocents. They knew what they were doing, they knew the rules of the game.'

'And Athene?' Hester looked into his eyes, searching for something.

'Not Athene,' he said definitely. 'She had a marriage all arranged for her, a rich, suitable one with a man old enough to be her father. She had to go to his bed unspoiled, so our little flirtation was just that and no more. Afterwards, she told me, things could be different, but by that time I'd learned a bit more, and besides, I liked her husband, so I tactfully went away.'

The room seemed to Hester to be warmer and the sunlight brighter. Daringly, she dropped a kiss on his mouth which was shaped to receive it. 'Very noble of you,' she murmured. 'The sort of action which shows great will power and a pure mind, and,' she sobered and her face became grave. 'I
do
understand about Katy's mother. That sort of thing alters a person— without it, you wouldn't be what you are now.' Humour bubbled up irrepressibly in her so that she chuckled. 'Not exactly a saint, but liveable with. Oh lord!' Her expression was comical. 'What you must have thought of me that first time when you forced your way into my bedsit!'

'You want to know?' Demetrios's eyes gleamed beneath half closed lids. 'I wasn't liking you when I arrived, I'd set out with some preconceived ideas based on my own experiences. Katy's mother wasn't to blame for having—er—fallen by the wayside, that was all my fault, so I was biased in favour of Vilma, although I never did like her very much. That's something I can't explain either. It was a gut reaction, because she's been a good wife to my uncle, she hasn't caused a breath of scandal. I thought you were being unpleasant to the wrong parent—see what I mean?'